Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations

The Spring 2012 exhibition organized by The Costume Institute of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Schiaparelli and Prada: Impossible Conversations, explores affinities between these two designers. Galleries juxtapose and create a visual dialogue between designs and accessories by Elsa Schiaparelli from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, and by Miuccia Prada from the late 1980s to the present. 

My greatest fans were the ultra-smart and conservative women who liked severe suits and plain black dresses. --Schiaparelli

I'm told that the women who wear my clothes vary dramatically. Of course, I'd hope that they were clever and interesting. I try to make women feel more powerful without losing their femininity. --Prada

In terms of the dressed body, the exhibition explores three expressive possibilities--the classical, the exotic and the surreal. The "Classical Body" gallery focuses on the designers' links to antiquity through the gaze of the late-18th and early-19th centuries. 

I feel that clothes have to be architectural: That the body must never be forgotten and it must be used as a frame is used in a building. The more the body is respected, the better the dress acquires vitality. The Greeks understood this rule, and gave it to their goddesses...the serenity of perfection and the fabulous appearance of freedom. --Schiaparelli

I look to antiquity, a time when clothes were very simple, very primitive. I love antiquity, the kind of beauty that you find in antiquity. --Prada

The "Exotic Body" gallery emphasizes the influence of Eastern cultures through saris, sarongs and other silhouettes. 

My father taught Orientalism at the University of Rome...it awakened the love of Eastern things which I have retained throughout my life. --Schiaparelli

When I reference other cultures, it is usually a vehicle to express or present an idea. I'm deeply interested in China, in all its different periods. Chinese women have a long tradition of beauty, of even decadence sometimes. --Prada

The "Surreal Body" section of the exhibition focuses on how the two designers affect contemporary images of the female body through Surrealistic practices--displacement, scale and blurring boundaries between illusion and reality, artificial and natural. Both Schiaparelli and Prada were closely associated with the artistic avant-garde. 

Artists took much more part in the life and development of fashion than they do now. --Schiaparelli

Nowadays, fashion no longer needs art to validate itself. Artists now realize the power of fashion to respond to current events quickly and critically. --Prada

May 10-August 19, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NYC; www.metmuseum.org.